Great Smoky Mountains Railroad: The Murphy Branch Lives On

The train you might see here operates on track that opened the western mountains to the outside world. The Murphy Branch of the Western North Carolina Railroad reached Dillsboro in eighteen eighty-three and Murphy in eighteen ninety-one, running about one hundred sixteen miles from Asheville. Southern Railway discontinued passenger service in nineteen forty-eight after sixty-four years.

When freight traffic also died by the mid-nineteen eighties, Norfolk Southern closed the Andrews-to-Murphy leg and the state of North Carolina bought the remaining track to prevent its removal. By nineteen eighty-eight, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad had formed and began running excursion trains. Today it carries around two hundred thousand passengers a year through gorges and tunnels that most automobiles never see.